BILINGUAL - Mark Chan
BILINGUAL - Mark Chan
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I had the wonderful opportunity of working with two of the most prolific singer-songwriters in Singapore when I was in Singapore Broadcasting Corporation (SBC). One of them was Dick Lee. The other was Mark Chan.
I had known Mark for quite some time. We were the same age, from the same school and for a short time we served National Service in the Navy together.
At some point in time, he left Singapore to study in the UK. We kept in touch occasionally and by then, he was already writing a lot of music to the poetry that he composed.
He was starting his music career then and I featured him in several of my productions with the station. I also recommended his works to Tracy Huang who recorded one of his songs in Chinese.
I didn’t get a chance to see him after I left SBC and one day, out of the blue, he contacted me with a recording that blew my mind. China Blue was his very personal project that melded the Asian elements with his folk sensibilities. With the increasing interest in Asian music in Japan, which was started by Dick Lee, I thought that the album should be heard in Japan too.
I recommended it to one of the top entertainment companies in Japan who decided to sign Mark to a two-album contract. By then, he was already into the second phase of his music career and he concentrated more on instrumentals with a strong ethnic influence. What I missed most were his alluring and poetic folk compositions which were the focus of the TV special that I produced in 1984.
This special was the second episode of a 4 episode series which is all about Singaporean music. I was lucky that, given the weak support for local music, I was able to get the series approved. Episode one was called Home Song, a very big production featuring the works of Dick Lee and I wanted to contrast it with a quieter, more subtle show done in a mini-concert style. This show was called Hearts & Minds. For those of you who love folk music, this is a programme that you sho
